


Quartz Song

by julii_wolfe



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:12:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julii_wolfe/pseuds/julii_wolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cameron Mitchell's first trip through the Stargate onto a planet in the Pegasus Galaxy, where he encounters a non-Pacific North West setting, nature, trees, ancient weather devices, and John Sheppard's sense of humor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quartz Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somehowunbroken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/gifts).



Quartz Song

This wasn’t Cameron Mitchell’s first time in Atlantis, but it was first time going through the gate in Atlantis to a planet in Pegasus, and he could feel the burn of pre-mission excitement tingling its way through his arms and legs. _This is stupid. I’ve been tortured by the freaking Ori. Hell, I went through how many hours of P.T. to fix my legs? So they’ve got vampiric space aliens, how bad . . ._ “No, I’m not even going to finish that sentence in my head,” he muttered.

Beside him, Major Evan Lorne smiled slightly and raised an eyebrow. “Talking to yourself, sir?”

“Just trying not to jinx the mission before we even get started,” Cam shrugged and felt the weight of his pack shift across his muscles. He had tightened the pack just right. If he had duck from enemy fire or take a diving roll, the weight of it wouldn’t throw his balance off any.

Beside him, Evan nodded absently. “I know exactly what you mean, sir. It’s like any time an alien princess flirts with Colonel Sheppard and he claims not to see it coming.” Lorne shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe how wrong those missions end up going.”

“Telling stories outside of class, Lorne?” Sheppard asked as he walked up to join the two at the gate.

“Well, sir, you have to admit, your romantic history in Pegasus has been somewhat . . . erratic?”

“Has it?” Sheppard dead panned. “I hadn’t noticed.” He paused a moment to glare at his second in command. “Are we going to sit around in a sewing circle all day, or were you ladies planning on leaving any time soon?”

Cam grinned at the obvious change in subject. “Just passing the time until you got here, Shep.”

“Well, I’m here. Let’s go.” He turned to look over his shoulder and waved at Chuck, the gate tech. “Dial it up!”

As the loud, familiar _whoosh_ of the worm hole formed, Cam turned back to Lorne. “You’re science office for this trip?”

“Well, sir, I did specialize in geology, and your reports on Merlin made it sound like you’d be interested in a rock my team and I found on PX72-4.”

“Yeah,” Cam acknowledged, stepping up to the event horizon. “I’ve got myself a hankering for a really specific rock.” __

_All the old SG reports go on about Egyptian gods and go'uld. I get stuck with Arthurian legends. I feel like a freaking Disney Cartoon._ Cam grimaced, and took the long, cold step through the gate.

A dark, overcast sky greeted the three men on the other side of the gate. Unlike the usual coniferous forest that usually greeted Stargate travelers, this planet’s trees had turned orange and brown. Trees that towered twenty to forty feet in the air had littered leaves across the forest floor, covering the tangled shrubbery below that fought for dominance in the spaces between the trees.

“Huh,” Sheppard grunted. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s cleared the weeds in a while.”

“No, sir,” Lorne confirmed. “My team found no human life signs, but we did find some ruins to the East.” He looked down at the tablet in his hands before pointing the right direction.

“Is it always this cloudy here?” Cam wondered.

“As far as we can tell, it’s seasonal, sir.” Lorne explained as he began the trek to the site.

A cold, biting wind whipped around them as they walked, and Cam hunkered down into his pack, grateful for the way it protected the back of his neck. The woods were quiet, and the men’s footsteps crackled over dead leaves. Overhead, loud caws and echoes of birdsong careened through the air as crows and sparrows startled from trees and shrubs.

“It’s a good thing General Landry isn’t here,” Cam noted. “He’d go crazy trying to find rare species of birds.”

“Really?” Sheppard’s face contorted in an expression of true confusion. “Why?”

“He’s a bird watcher,” Cam said the last word with disgust.

“Does he do nature photography or just catalog the habits of the--” Lorne trailed off at the dead expressions on Cam and Sheppard’s faces.

“Are we actually going to those ruins, Major?” Sheppard asked sardonically. “Or would you rather take the time to indulge in a discussion of hobbies?”

Lorne’s face fell back into its usual bland, professional demeanor. “It’s just around those trees, sir.”

“Right,” Cam exhaled and watched the steam of his breath disappear in front of his face. “Let’s move out before it starts to snow.”

Sheppard smiled at the comment, and Cam shook his head as he remembered General O’Neill’s long standing criticism of Sheppard, “He _liked_ Antarctica.” O’Neill was known to quote this an explanation of all of Sheppard’s eccentricities, up to and including his friendship with McKay.

Cam first saw the ruins as they made a turn around a copse of trees. Frameworks of homes made of stone stood in a still hush, and green plants and moss fought their way through the cracks in walls and the uneven, cobblestone path between houses. Sheppard and Mitchell followed Lorne carefully down the winding stone path, until they reached a broken down fence surrounding a circle of green.

“Dr. Parish found this area when we explored the ruins,” Lorne explained. “He wanted to see if any garden variety plants survived when people stopped cultivating them.”

“Is that how you guys found those little blue onions that were in the stew last week,” Sheppard sounded slightly accusatory, and Cam raised an eyebrow in question.

“What’s wrong with little blue onions?” he wondered.

“They were very nutritious, sir,” Lorne defended. “And you said the stew was delicious when you were eating it.”

Sheppard glared at both of them. “They turned my teeth blue for a week.”

Cam, as Shep’s equal, snorted, while Lorne valiantly maintained a straight face in front of his senior officer.

“Yes, sir, I know. I saw the pictures in the email Dr. Zelenka sent out.”

“Hey, I didn’t see any pictures!” Cam protested.

“And you aren’t going to.” Sheppard growled. “Lorne, the rock we’re looking for is in this garden?”

“Yes, sir, underneath the brush there,” he pointed at an area near the center of the circle where thorns and brambles grew over each other to almost six feet in height.

“Anybody bring a machete?” Cam joked. “I don’t think bullets are going to help us cut through all of that.”

“No, sir.” Lorne apologized.

“Get out your combat knives,” Sheppard sighed. “Try not to let the thorns tear you to shreds.”

“Good advice.”

The three men slowly cut their way through the vines at the base and threw them off to one side. The process was tedious, and all three of them were cut by thorns at some point. Cam on his wrist and hands, Lorne all over his fingers, and Sheppard somehow managed to cut a long line down the side of his face. Slowly, their work revealed a large, round, quartz filled boulder that stood four feet in height. In the center of the stone, the black haft of a sword hilt stuck up from the rock.

“You’re kidding me,” Cam stood in shock. “You found the sword in the stone?”

“Doctor Parrish programmed his life signs detector to spot the cold spots where plants weren’t,” Lorne explained. “It outlined the sword hilt pretty clearly.” He shrugged. “When I read your mission reports--”

“Which all read like a fantasy novel,” Sheppard interjected.

“I thought you might be interested,” Lorne finished with a glare.

“Do we just pull it out?” Cam wondered, sparing a glare for Sheppard.

“We won’t know until we try,” Sheppard studied the hilt carefully. “Lorne, any power readings coming from this thing?”

“No, sir, why?”

“I just want to make sure I don’t get zapped by anything when I do this,” Shep’s hand reach toward the hilt, but Cam knocked it away.

“Hey,” Shep protested.

“My fantasy novel reports, my sword,” Cam retorted.

“Fine,” Sheppard crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Be my guest.”

Cam reached out and clasped his hand around the hilt. The metal was worn and cold at first, but quickly warmed to his touch. He gave a short tug on the hilt, which didn’t move at all. He tugged again. A low pitched whining sound began to hum all around the garden, and the sword grew warmer in his hand.

“That isn’t good,” Sheppard grabbed his P-90.

“No, sir,” Lorne acknowledged. “Power readings just shot up in the sword.”

Cam continued to tug futilely at the hilt with both hands, and the sword slowly grated against the inside of the stone and moved upward half an inch. The whining sound pitched higher and louder, and grated like an air raid siren.

“Hurry it up, Cam.” Sheppard commanded as the skies overhead began to darken.

“Sirs, maybe we should clear the area,” Lorne shouted in worry. “It seems like the power in the stone is causing atmospheric disturbance!”

Wind swirled around them, heaving the leaves and branches. Ice pellets spewed from the sky, and one hit Cam directly on the forehead.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sheppard yelled.

“I can’t!” Cam replied in panic.

“Why not!”

“My hands. I can’t let go of the damn hilt. I’m stuck!”

Sheppard let his P-90 fall to his side and hurried to join Cam on top of the rock and wrapped his hands around the hilt too. Cam felt the sword loosen a few more inches from the rock, but it would slide clean.

“Lorne,” Sheppard cried. “Get up here and help!”

Together, all three men pulled upward, Lorne and Sheppard with their hands around the hilt, and Lorne pulling at the blade below. The wind screamed through the air, icy rain washed over them, and Cam felt his muscles tighten and go stiff.

“We need to get this thing out of here fast! Before we get hypothermia.”

“You sound like McKay,” Sheppard replied. “Shut up and pull!”

Cam growled in frustration and gave a last, strong, pull. The sword broke free of the stone, cutting it into two large, broken pieces, and ricocheting rubble everywhere. Cam fell to the ground and groaned as Sheppard and Lorne fell on top of him.

“That was not fun at all,” Cam complained, before suddenly falling silent.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of light. The pieces of quartz that had studded the boulder were releasing a roseate glow. The rain and wind stopped, and the air around them grew warm.

“What the hell?” Sheppard asked.

Overhead the clouds lightened in color and bright warm light broke through the cracks between them.

Lorne stood up and examined the quartz crystals, which were slowly rolling toward each other and sticking together as one large, lumpish crystal.

“This is odd, sir,” Lorne turned to Sheppard.

“Which part?”

“These stones seem to be humming, sir, and they are giving off an energy reading that I’ve never seen before.”

Cam creaked his way upright and stared at the quartz crystals on the ground and then examined sword in his hand.

“Huh,” he wiped the grimy stone dust off the blade. “The sword isn’t metal.”

He kept rubbing the blade until he could see the spidery veins of quartz that ran through the crystal. Like the quartz from the boulder, a glow seemed to emit from the blade.

“Looks like it’s the same stuff that’s in the rock,” Cam held the blade in front of him, and felt a slight pull, almost like a tug. “Huh. That’s weird.”

“Want to be more specific there, Cam? There’s kind of a lot of weird going on,” Sheppard looked pointedly at the sword, the rocks, and the clear blue sky overhead.

Cam stood still a moment, and again felt the gentle tug. He took a step toward the quartz on the ground. The pull from the sword grew stronger, more intense.

“I think the sword has some kind of attraction to the rocks.”

“Well the quartz seems to have an attractive pull of some kind,” Lorne noted. “All the loose pieces have moved toward each other.”

Cam took another step toward the rubble and gingerly let the sword touch the ball of quartz that had formed from the rubble.

Lightening crashed overhead. The sky shattered into darkness. Icy rain again began to pour.

“Holy shit!” Cam exclaimed. He pulled the sword away from the ball of quartz, while Lorne held onto the ball, making sure that they stayed separate.

Quiet unraveled from the skies. The sudden silence made Cam feel like his head was stuffed with cotton, thick and unresponsive.

 “Maybe that wasn’t the best idea,” Cam panted and wiped the rain from his eyes.

“No, really,” Sheppard asked. His hair lay flat against his forehead.

“The sword and quartz seem to exert some kind of weather control,” Lorne remarked. “We should take them back to Atlantis for further study.”

“Well, that’s obvious,” Cam replied. “Besides, why should they be studied in Atlantis? Why not back on earth?”

The two colonels bickered their way back to the Stargate. Cam carried the sword, and Lorne the crystal ball. Overhead, the sky stayed clear and sunny, as though the seasons had turned back a step in their usual autumnal dance.

 

 


End file.
